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If you’ve been listening to the news at all in the last few months, you’ve likely run across the term Open Banking – a lot. The internet is awash with articles, thought pieces, blogs, books and podcasts on Open Banking.

There’s definitely a pattern emerging in finance that is seeing power slowly flowing back to individuals with regards to their data. Where once banks ruled supreme, there’s now a market for fintech services to build layers on top of banks’ APIs under the EU’s PSD2 (Revised Payment Service Directive).

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Artificial intelligence and machine learning are emerging as the most defining tech-marvel in this new wave of financial services. The technology, along with the abundance of data, has given way to several innovative FinTech business models.

In 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin partly in response to the 2008 financial collapse. He envisioned a purely peer-to-peer financial system in which you don’t have to trust third-party institutions to make transactions. Now, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of upcoming cryptocurrencies that have built on Bitcoin’s foundation. They’re here to enhance the financial industry in the same way that Bitcoin did for simple transactions.

I was recently interviewed by the highly innovative German bank Wirecard the other day, for their blog. They kindly said I replicate it on the Finanser, so here you go … “Cash Is Not a Good Payment System – We Need to Get Rid of It, and We Will”

As transactions continue to leave the bank branch and the cost structure of supporting physical facilities places legacy organizations at a disadvantage, more banks and credit unions are considering a digital-only delivery alternative. Is this a viable strategy for the future?

According to the National Cyber Security Centre, set up in 2016 to deal with the growing number of network attacks, there were almost 800 serious attacks on businesses between October 2016 (when the agency was first set up) and the end of 2017. It’s fair to say that in 2018, this number is far from reducing, with the governmental organisation predicting figures for this year will quickly overtake the previous year’s attacks.

Why do consumers love some mobile banking apps and hate others? Deliver the right experience and people will rave about ease-of-use and features such as the ability to freeze credit cards, biometric fingerprint login, text alerts and expense tracking. So how does your mobile banking app stack up?

For many people, using an ATM or even stepping into a local bank branch to perform a transaction with a teller is second nature; it’s not something we even think about. For many others, especially those in very rural areas, access to banking services is a real problem though. Financial technology, known as fintech, is bridging the gap and helping more consumers gain access.

Podcasts & Videos

Ross takes the panel through the latest interesting and amusing stories from the fintech world, including: Global fintech funding hitting a record high, Revolut's unicorn valuation, Amazon's foray into blockchain and Cryptocurrency means funeral finance? All this and so much more on this episode of Fintech Inisider!